Wild River

Filmed on location in the Tennessee Valley, Wild River is set in the early 1930s. Montgomery Clift plays an idealistic TVA agent, assigned to convince the locals to move from their property so that a beneficial dam can be built. The principal holdout is feisty octogenarian Jo Van Fleet, who refuses ...more

Elia Kazan became a pariah for fingering supposed Communist sympathizers in the entertainment world during the HUAC hearings of the 1950s. But Kazan, himself a former leftist admirer of socialism, made many films which were powerfully liberal. One notable example is The Wild River, the 1960 story of an old woman who refuses to give up her property to the U.S. government's Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s. Montgomery Clift plays the government's chief dam ambassador, who runs into a stone ...more